


Bookends

by ncfan



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Background Saw/Lux, Bechdel Test Pass, Canon Speculation, Canon-Typical Violence, Gap Filler, Gen, POV Female Character, Pre-Canon, Triggers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-24
Updated: 2017-01-24
Packaged: 2018-09-19 19:13:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9456809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ncfan/pseuds/ncfan
Summary: All those years with Saw, and the story ends the same way it began.





	

**Author's Note:**

> [CN/TW: Death, depictions of Jyn’s time as a child soldier, mentions of forced prostitution]
> 
> A couple of things. Firstly, Saw’s eye color seems to change with every piece of media he appears in. I’ve gone with the color his eyes were in TCW, blue. Second, Jyn’s characterization is based on what I think she might have been like after she was separated from her parents, and before Saw abandoned her. It’s honestly pretty speculative. Even if you don’t agree with the way I’ve characterized her, I hope you enjoy the story anyways.
> 
> Also, keep in mind that it's been about a month since I last saw the movie.

There is much that will be eaten up by black holes in memory, but the moment when Jyn goes from being Galen and Lyra Erso’s daughter to Saw Gerrera’s charge, that much always remains astoundingly, viciously clear.

The cold, damp thump of her mother’s body hitting the ground still rings louder in Jyn’s ears than the blaster fire that preceded it. That thump was like the shockwaves that inevitably prelude an earthquake—she kept expecting, _keeps_ expecting, the ground to split beneath her feet. When she hears the gravel shifting outside, Jyn presses her back to the wall, tries to fold in on herself like the cheap plastic wrappers of her favorite snacks, but she cannot tear her eyes away from the hatch. Her stomach churns, her mind is almost blank with fear, but if death is coming, Jyn wants to _look_ at it. She wants to make it see her, wants to scream and kick and bite. She isn’t sure if she _can_ —she is but a little thing—but if she can, she would like to be brave, like her mother was.

But a blast of cool, damp air banishes the sharp metal smell of the bunker, and a weathered brown face out of which blue eyes shine is looking down at her.

“Come, my child,” Saw calls, “there is much to do.”

And strong arms are lifting her up, and for a moment, Jyn forgets everything in the warm glow of feeling _safe_.

-0-0-0-

They do not speak until they reach Saw’s ship, a bedraggled old thing whose hull is scored all over with black marks. The crew, a mix of humans and aliens, have the same look as Saw—lean and hungry, shifting restlessly from foot to foot, eyes darting to every shadowed corner. Jyn stares at them out of wide eyes, drawing closer to Saw’s shadow. She _knows_ Saw. Her parents know—knew—him. She doesn’t know any of these people. Her parents never told her about them.

Saw takes her into a small cabin and kneels down in front of her. There is a long scar that cuts across his face, fading and rolling back into skin, but puckering slightly all the way. There’s a fresh scab under his ear, and his trousers are speckled with old, red blood, and Jyn wonders how she never noticed it before. But she cannot ask, for Saw is asking her, before she can even open her mouth, “Jyn, I need you to tell me—did you know anything of your father’s work?”

 _‘Everything I do, I do for you,’_ is ringing in her mind so loud it hurts, and Jyn is shaking her head, before her mother’s _‘Now, Jyn, that’s rude; we must_ speak _with our friends’_ drives her to say, “No.” Hushed snatches of conversation don’t count; Jyn doesn’t remember half of them now, and they never did make much sense—she always focused more on her mother’s sharp eyes, her father’s tight jaw.

Saw’s breath whistles out from between his teeth. “He said little of it to me; I had hoped you would know more.” His mouth twists in a grimace. “Well, Jyn, the Empire likely took your father alive.” From the way he sounds, Jyn can’t tell if that’s supposed to be a good thing or not. But then, no one ever seems able to tell if it’s a good thing or not. “There is that.”

“Mama’s dead,” Jyn says flatly in response. She hears the thud again, but maybe it’s the cough of the engine as it roars into life, and the ship begins to lift from the ground.

Saw smiles sadly. “I know. I saw.”

He… saw? Jyn stares at him, jarred out of apathy. “But…” Her blood is racing too fast, too fast inside her veins; they might just burst open. “…But they can’t… We can’t just _leave_ her.”

“Jyn, we cannot go back.”

“But we have to bury her!” Jyn protests, her voice cracking high and shrill. Every muscle in her body pulls tight enough to snap, she thinks, if only she makes a bad move. “Mama says everyone has to go back to the ground when they die; if they don’t, they can’t…” She trails off. Her father told her what happened to people who don’t get buried when they die, once, when it was late and she wanted a scary story. What she had relished then, she cannot bear to speak of now. For it to happen to her mother…

At that, Saw reaches out, and presses his hand to the top of Jyn’s head, smoothing her hair down beneath his fingers. Jyn winces at first—his touch is heavy, and her skin feels like it might spring off her flesh at any moment—but slowly, taut muscles unwind, and her shoulders droop. “I am sorry, Jyn,” he tells her softly, that sad smile still playing at his mouth. “We cannot bury your mother. But we can avenge her. Would you like that?”

Far away, deep inside, something in Jyn is screaming. Slowly, she nods.

When next Jyn sleeps, she dreams her father is walking into space, his beard bristling with frost, his lips tinged deep, dusky blue. _“Wait for me, my stardust,”_ he tells her, but though she can make out the words so clearly, when he opens his mouth, all Jyn hears is the scream of a TIE fighter. _“We shall meet again.”_

 _“Trust in the Force, Jyn,”_ her mother calls, and she hits the ground with a thud, and the thud really is an earthquake this time, and the ground breaks beneath Jyn’s feet, plunging her into a dark, viscous sea with no trace of light. She struggles to swim towards the surface, but her arms are caught fast in the mire, and she screams without sound. _“Trust in the Force,”_ comes a whisper out of darkness, and no matter how Jyn screams, she cannot make a sound.

Jyn wakes up with salt tears on her lips and her kyber crystal warm beneath clenched fingers. _I’ll see Papa again,_ she promises herself. _Even if it takes a million years, I will._

But for now, she has much to do.

-0-0-0-

Jyn’s first impression of Onderon is of trotting down the gangplank of the ship into sunlight so bright that she has to shut her eyes and then blink endlessly against the light. The air is damp like it is at home, but _hot_. It presses down from all sides, and already Jyn feels heavy and sweltering, sweat starting to pool under her clothes.

They’ve made touchdown on a small landing pad in the middle of a forest in the mountains. The trees are massive, winding things, their green and golden leaves arrayed in fans that span three meters or more. There are empty spaces on other landing pads, and around them are a ring of ramshackle wooden buildings. Most of them have the look of houses, but one is a stable home to large, four-legged beasts with leathery brown skin and liquid eyes (“Tee-muss,” she’s told). High above them on a cliff, reddish-orange winged reptiles stare down at them, flapping their wings and giving short, shrill cries.

“They are rupings,” Saw tells Jyn when she points excitedly at them, and adds laughingly, “When you’re older, you will learn to ride them. But for now, you must meet the others.”

They follow the small crew of Saw’s ship into a door cut into the cliff face on top of which the rupings bask. A sentry nods to them as they pass. Jyn walks down a dark, narrow tunnel, down steep stairs that go down, well, Jyn isn’t certain how far. She’s counted twenty-two steps, but she’s also had to give most of her concentration over to making sure she doesn’t trip and crack her head open on the cool, rough-hewn stone. The air is still damp here, but less cloying, and not so hot as outside; Jyn’s skin prickles with goose bumps.

Slowly, the darkness begins to give way to a pale, misty gray-golden light. Jyn blinks against it, but as the stairs run out, she stares in wonder.

Deep in the cliff, there is a wide cavern—Jyn cannot say from looking whether it was deliberately carved out of the rock, or if it eroded over time as her mother has told her can happen when rivers flow underground. The roof of the cavern soars away, a good ten meters, maybe higher. Misty light pours in shafts from narrow windows carved high up near the ceiling, and orange-gold light shines from lamps lit by a buzzing generator off somewhere. There are little wooden huts clustered around the walls (Though not directly below the windows, nor obstructing any of the dark doorways back into the rock that Jyn spots). The empty space in the middle of the cavern is crisscrossed with wires and cables, and there are maybe two dozen (or three dozen, depending on the number of eyes Jyn spots staring out at her through windows and doorways) people milling around.

The introductions go by in a nearly overwhelming blur. There’s the mechanic who keeps the ships running, and there’s the mechanic who keeps everything else running. There’s the quartermaster, there’s the tee-muss handlers, the ruping handlers, there’s the scouts and the hunters and the look-outs.

There are a few other children here, though none so young as Jyn. The closest is an eleven-year-old Twi’lek girl named Essana, with creamy yellow skin, sparkling brown eyes, and pale hexagonal tattoos on her lekku. The rest are young teenagers—Jess, a human boy, a twitchy-looking Chiss named Alleran, and a tall, almost skeletally thin Pau’an who gives no introduction, but only a short nod.

“She’s mute,” Essana whispers to Jyn. “There’s a shrapnel scar on her neck, see? Nobody knows her name, so we just call her ‘Patience.’”

“Why do you call her that?” Jyn whispers back. Patience is rooting through a wooden crate, sorting out foodstuffs recently brought in from Iziz for the quartermaster. Bent to the task, her black eyes are narrowed in concentration.

Essana shrugs, her lekku swishing. “Because she can do all the boring jobs like they’re the most interesting things in the galaxy.” She rests her hand on Jyn’s shoulder and leans in to whisper, even more quietly, “Do you know, she’s older than Saw? It’s true! Pau’ans age really slowly; they—“ Essana jerks her head back up when someone calls for her. “What? Oh, yes, yes, I’m coming!”

Jyn eyes Patience with some curiosity, but before she can approach her, Saw’s calling her away to get new clothes (“You’ll boil in the clothes you have on now”) from the quartermaster, who for some reason glares at Saw when Jyn tells her her age.

-0-0-0-

Many things will Jyn learn over the years, but the first thing Saw teaches her is how to shoot straight.

There is a small, makeshift firing range outside in a small clearing, a row of old cans lined up on a wooden fence, and a line of bull’s-eye target boards facing the opposite direction. The sunlight keeps shifting through layers of branches and thick clouds rolling in from the south. In the distance, thunder breaks the thick pall of heavy, humid air, if only for a moment.

Saw's explained what to do—just try to hit a can, one at a time; the blaster’s set to stun, so you don’t have to worry if your aim is off—but the blaster is cold and heavy in her small hands, as her mother’s must have been in hers. She looks to Saw and asks, simply, “Why?”

For a moment, Jyn sees impatience twist his features, and she draws back a little, but Saw sighs, and shakes his head. “Jyn, do you know what it is we do here?”

“You fight the Empire,” Jyn replies promptly. She _was_ paying attention on the ship and in the cavern-hideout. These people are rebels, and now she’s a rebel, too, though Jyn would be lying if she said she knew much about just what it is a rebel _does_. Going by the news, stealing things, mostly, and Jyn isn’t sure she knows how to feel about being a thief. Her mother always said…

But her mother had said not to hurt people, either, and then she’d shot the man in the white coat, the man Jyn vaguely remembers from _before_. And now she’s lying under open sky, where the earth cannot embrace her.

“Too true.” Saw smiles humorlessly. “We traded one foe for another at the end of the war. Now our enemy comes for us better-equipped than the Separatists ever were, for they come claiming not to be conquerors, but the ones we should have been following all this time. They like to try confusing us, but you’re a smart one, aren’t you? Do you think you’ll be fooled?”

“No, Saw.” Jyn frowns at the thought; she doesn’t like being tricked, even when only in jest.

“Good.” Saw holds out his hands, palms-up, and Jyn relinquishes her blaster to his care, eager to be rid of it. He runs his hand over the muzzle of the blaster, lets out a small breath. “Listen, my child. A single man with a sharpened stick can make all the difference on the battlefield. Thank the ancestors, we are better-equipped than that, though what we are given is not quite the equal of the latest from Imperial R and D. But we must all be prepared to fight, for our enemy is _always_ prepared, and they will not hesitate to kill you, if they find you.

“Jyn…” Saw stares seriously into her face, and Jyn finds she couldn’t look away from him if she tried. “…I cannot give you that safety which your parents would have wished for you. Safety is another planet, another lifetime. But as I said, I can give you the means to avenge your mother, and if we wish to _make_ a galaxy where you can be safe, we must first work for it. I make sure that everyone under my command can fire a blaster, and aim true. It is one of the things we must do to make this galaxy ours again, for there will come a day when you _must_ use it.”

“So… it’s like doing chores?” Jyn asks uncertainly. She’s no stranger to chores; there was always something that needed to be done back home.

A peal of surprised laughter escapes from Saw’s lips. “I’ve never heard it put like that, but yes, Jyn. Our work may seem never-ending, but there will come a day when it will all…” He pauses. For an instant, Jyn thinks she sees some shadow pass over his face, but when she blinks, it’s gone, and surely, she must have imagined it. “…When it will all have been worth it. Now…” He holds the blaster back out to her. “…Before you can shoot straight, you must first learn how.”

She still feels as though the blaster is heavy, too heavy for her, but Jyn cannot refuse it now. There is something inside of herself that won’t let her refuse this, the part that her father has always called _‘my brave girl’_ and now howls because it remembers that thud on the grass, it remembers her mother left beneath the open sky. For that part of herself, she must do this. She can’t do anything else.

As it turns out, when it comes to straight shooting, Jyn is a natural.

-0-0-0- 

As it _also_ turns out, Jyn was prescient when she had assumed that being one of Saw’s rebels would involve chores. Lots of chores.

If there was always something that needed to be done back home, here in this base on Onderon there are always ten things that need to be done at once. Blasters need to be cleaned, ships need to have maintenance performed on them. Beasts need to be fed or let out to graze and exercise, and stables need to be mucked out. Floors must be swept, rations sorted, clothes washed or mended. Duty rosters must be made available, patrols must be carried out, target practice must be held regularly, and long-range perimeter sensors must be checked.

To her great disappointment (Jyn would very much have liked to see more of Onderon’s wilderness), Jyn is rarely given any duties that would require her to leave the base. When she asks the quartermaster, a dark-skinned human woman with sharp, angular features, whose name, Jyn has learned, is Ijana Besanti, stares and laughs incredulously at her. “You? Jyn, Saw may be recruiting anyone he can find, but you’re, well, look at you! You’re too young, yet, for any of our operations; you couldn’t keep up with anyone with longer legs. It’ll be a while before you’re asked to actually use that blaster of yours. If you’d been here a few years ago, I bet you’d not be so eager; they took the heat off of us after things blew up on Mandalore again, but it was pretty bad here for a while. Now, away with you. I’ve work to do, and so do you.”

It’s sweeping floors and cleaning out stables for Jyn, with the biggest bright spot being target practice. She’s found she likes shooting cans after all. Rarely does Jyn ever miss, and sometimes, when she hits a particularly difficult target, Saw claps her shoulder and smiles. His smiles aren’t the same as her father’s, and those rough claps to her shoulders aren’t gentle like her father’s embrace, but they make Jyn feel warm inside just the same.

Saw is often gone. There are other camps in the mountains that must be visited, and he often ventures into Iziz (Onderon’s only city; imagine that, a planet with only _one_ city) to meet with contacts or gather what intelligence he can. When he’s gone, Jyn often finds herself under Essana’s care, or under the watchful eyes of silent Patience, both of whom have her serve as their helpers as they go about their duties.

Patience is… alright. She tends to bare her teeth often in what Jess has told Jyn is some sort of Pau’an threat gesture, but apparently that’s because she has nothing with which to cover her ears, and often winds up with headaches as a result. Patience has been showing Jyn, slowly, painstakingly, how to properly clean different kinds of blasters. Sometimes, when they have a few spare moments, Patience scratches words in the dirt, and they can talk that way, but it’s slow going, and they don’t talk about much. What Utapau, Patience’s homeworld, is like, mostly.

More often, Jyn finds herself with Essana, who in contrast to Patience fills the air with talk, until that air is buzzing with word after cheerful word. Words to fill the silence, words to banish worry, words to make Jyn forget the now-constant pit of hunger that gnaws at her stomach, strips fat from her bones until those bones start to jut. _I look like them_ , Jyn thinks. _I look like someone who’s hungry all the time_.

Before the Empire came, Essana lived in Iziz with her parents, and she is always happy to describe the city to her new friend. “Oh, Jyn, Iziz is a beautiful place. It’s been growing for centuries, and there are now several ‘rings’ to the city, formed by where the new city walls would be built, before building started outside again.”

Iziz comes alive as a riot of colors and smells and sounds—the floristry, the baker’s shop where Essana was sent to pick up pastries, the spaceport that so many sleek ships dock at, to reveal traders bearing rare, expensive wares. The great markets where there is such a great press of people that you could easily become lost only five feet from your door. The palace located at the heart of the old city, soaring high and above everything else—though the old king has died, Jyn is told, and in the absence of any heirs, the Empire has appointed a governor to take his place.

Essana runs out of words when she gets to her parents. She’s had no shortage of them before, but here, her mouth runs dry, her eyes going glassy. To fill the silence, Jyn tells her about Coruscant, instead, what little of Coruscant she can recall. Her confused memories come out as skylines glittering like galaxies full of stars, but Essana smiles anyways, and thanks her.

“What is that jewel you wear?” Essana asks one day, after they’ve finished sweeping. Jyn normally keeps her mother’s crystal tucked under her shirt, but today she’s brought it out to hold it, and Essana points with knobby, once-broken fingers.

Jyn clutches the white crystal close to her chest. “My mother gave it to me,” she mutters, and hates the wariness that creeps up her spine. She’s seen no theft committed since she came here, but her parents both told her, more than once, that thievery isn’t the only thing she has to worry about.

Essana raises an eyebrow—bare, not tattooed or penciled-on like grown Twi’lek women often have—at her and probes, “That doesn’t quite answer my question, Jyn. If I told you I got these tattoos—“ she touches the white hexagonal tattoos on one of her lekku for emphasis “—from Del’iar the tattoo artist, that wouldn’t tell you a thing about what they really _are_.”

This wasn’t… She’s not supposed to talk about her mother’s beliefs. That’s what both of her parents had always told her. Her mother could get in trouble. _But she’s_ dead _now,_ Jyn reminds herself. There’s no trouble Lyra Erso can get into now that’s worse than the trouble she already got into back home. “It’s… It’s a kyber crystal,” she explains. “The Jedi used them to power their lightsabers.” She’d never asked her mother where she got it. Now, more than anything, Jyn wishes she had.

‘Kyber crystal’ is not a term unknown to Essana, because the older girl’s eyes grow almost comically huge. “You mean that’s a focusing crystal?!” she exclaims, only to wince when one of the adults looks up and glares at her. More quietly, she goes on, “Where in the cosmos would your mother have gotten one? The Empire’s been destroying lightsabers for years now, and kyber crystals are supposed to be really rare!”

Every snatch of talk Jyn ever picked up between her parents about the Jedi darts through her mind, but she can remember nothing useful. She just shrugs. “Ilum’s supposed to have lots of kyber crystal, isn’t it? Jedha, too.”

“Maybe.” Essana smiles wistfully. “Someone told me once that kyber crystals came from the heart of exploding stars, and they were made of star stuff. That’s how lightsabers can shine so brightly.”

_Star stuff… Is that why Papa called me ‘stardust?’_

“You ever watch the news a lot during the Clone Wars?” Essana asks suddenly. Her voice is dreamy, drifting.

“I don’t really remember…”

“Oh, sorry. I keep forgetting how young you are. There was…” Essana stares off at the distant ceiling, her eyes glazed and abstracted. “There was a Twi’lek general during the Clone Wars, a Jedi Knight named Aayla Secura. I used to daydream about being just like her. I’d use my lightsaber, scrap all the droids, and kick all the Separatists right off Onderon. Now, look at us.” There’s no mistaking the note of bitterness in her voice.

Jyn nods silently. Now, look at them. They must carry on the fight even though the war supposedly ended years ago, and all the Jedi are gone.

-0-0-0-

From time to time, Jyn catches Saw taking out a small holoprojector and flicking it on. Never out in the open; it’s always in the hut in the cavern that he claimed as his “office” and living space. Never for long. Someone calls for him, or Jyn knocks on the doorframe, or something falls and crashes in the quartermaster’s office, and the projector’s switched off, and Saw’s up to go see what the matter is.

Jyn’s never gotten a good look at the image produced by the projector. The face of a human woman, she thinks, but she cannot be certain. Whoever she is, she must have been important to Saw, because whenever he looks at her, he looks just as Jyn feels when she clutches her kyber crystal. Like something inside has been emptied and hollowed out, and what’s taken its place is no kinder than cold vacuum.

The first few times Jyn’s ever called upon to be part of a raid, her part in the thing is inevitably a bit of a letdown. Saw takes a team out in the dead of night to ambush an Imperial supplies shipment on the way to Iziz, and Jyn gets the glorious job of lookout. The only thing she’s supposed to do is sit tight with the binoculars and watch for any signs of _anything_ approaching. She has north and east to watch, while the other lookout gets south and west.

Well, this is thoroughly boring. If Jyn’s supposed to be part of stealing things, whether it’s food, supplies, mechanical parts, or occasionally even weapons (though the latter often ends up being sent away, for reasons Jyn doesn’t really understand, but does know has to do with Saw’s contacts with other rebel cells), she’d like to be a little more actively involved with that than she is. But orders are orders; they cannot be brooked.

She’s told the chance to prove herself will come more quickly than she’d like.

How true that is.

One night, when freezing rain makes visibility poor even with the binoculars set to pick up heat signatures, Jyn’s fellow lookout misses something. Or, rather, he doesn’t miss it completely, but spots it too late to make a difference.

The transport they’ve raided was supposed to send a signal back to its base once it passed a certain waypoint, and when it didn’t do that, two Imperial patrols were dispatched to converge on its last known location to investigate. The driving rain has done all too good a job of masking the roar of the speeder engines, and almost before a warning can be shouted out, the group is surrounded by at least a dozen stormtroopers.

Before one of the troopers can even shout “Halt!”, the air erupts in blaster fire, ghastly light turning the rain to crimson blood. Saw guns down the commander; somebody else picks up the lieutenant and bodily throws them through the air. The air is filled with screaming.

Her heart hammering in her throat, so loud that she’s amazed it doesn’t drown out everything else, Jyn shrinks closer to the Imperial transport. She’s not… One of her companions falls in the mud in front of her, his eyes sightless and staring into Jyn’s craven heart. This isn’t what… isn’t what she thought…

A shrill, shrieking blaster bolt whizzes past her ear, impacting on the hull of the transport. Jyn’s eyes snap up and focus on white armor splattered with sucking brown mud, the dark viewport of a helmet, the shiny black blaster barrel aimed directly at her own head.

“Get up,” the trooper tells her, in the flat, toneless voice of someone who’s done this so many times that they’ve grown bored with it. “Put your hands in the air. No sudden moves; got that, kid?”

 _Kid…_ All the other troopers started shooting without giving the rebels any kind of chance to surrender. _He’s not shooting… because I’m a kid?_

But Jyn knows he’ll shoot her if he gets half the chance. Her mother knew that, and the corpse on the ground in front of her knew that.

It all happens so fast—a clichéd line, Jyn will later learn, but clichéd precisely because it is so _true_. She’s clambering to her feet, and her fingers are curling around the blaster tucked into her belt at the same time, and she’s aiming true like Saw always told her. One shot to the chest makes the trooper stumble and drop his blaster. The second makes him fall.

Saw told Jyn once that stormtroopers’ armor doesn’t protect you much more than a tin can would. She can see the truth of that, now, though it seemed ridiculous at the time.

The trooper lies crumpled in the mud, and if the rain drumming down on that glossy white armor doesn’t wake him up, he must be dead for sure. Jyn stands over him, rooted to the ground. The body of her fallen friend closer to her is completely forgotten, as is the weight of the binoculars dangling from her neck, the rainwater sneaking under her collar to wet her skin, the blaster still-smoking in her hands. She stares, transfixed, at the armored shell splayed in the muck.

Like that, the dead trooper bears closer resemblance to a doll discarded after play than a cooling corpse. Back home, Jyn had a stormtrooper doll—though he was originally a _clone_ trooper doll, or at least that was what he was when her mother had bought him for her when she was still a baby—she had played with until his white paint was peeling and his armor was scratched. He doesn’t look like a person, lying there like that. He looks just like a broken doll, a hollow shell with nothing inside of it. Would she even see anything, if she took the helmet off?

But Jyn has a sneaking suspicion that she’ll just throw up if she touches the armored shell before her, so she doesn’t move. Instead, she wishes suddenly, desperately, that her father was here.

Jyn doesn’t remember when her hands began to shake. She doesn’t remember when she first started to feel cold. She doesn’t remember when the scream began to build in her throat, ripping flesh apart around it. Truth be told, she doesn’t even remember going back to the base, not until she’s slumped against the rock outside one of the narrow doorways, and Saw is leaning over her and prying her blaster out of her hand. Oh. She _was_ holding it pretty tightly, wasn’t she?

“I…” Her tongue is thick and clumsy in her mouth, the walls of her mouth dry as dust despite all the rain. “I…” Her voice is a weak thing to the torrent the skies have unleashed on them.

“You remember your lessons well.” Saw’s mouth is quirked in a smile, but there’s something odd about it, like he can’t decide whether to be happy or not. “And you didn’t hesitate after the first shot. That’s good. If you had, he would have recovered, and killed you.”

“I… I think I’m…”

“It’s alright, Jyn. Most get like this, the first time they kill someone. Sit down, now.”

Her knees are already starting to wobble, so it’s no great task for Saw to press his hand to Jyn’s shoulder and ease her to the ground. Jyn holds her shaking hands out before her, turning them over for inspection. The freezing rain has sapped her skin of all color, and only faint traces of dirt can be found caked under her fingernails. That’s funny; you’d think there would be some red, somewhere. The Empire only taps humans to fill the ranks of their stormtroopers, and if there’s one thing all humans have in common, it’s their sticky red blood.

 _There wasn’t any blood when you shot him though, remember?_ Jyn’s blaster tends to cauterize wounds as quickly as they’re created, or so she’s been told—she’s seen the truth of that in action tonight, she supposes. The dead trooper was just like a big doll some giant child had thrown to the ground during a tantrum.

“Jyn…” She lifts her head to meet Saw’s serious gaze. “…How do you feel?”

One feeling does manage to coalesce enough for her to say, quite honestly, “As though I’m going to be sick.”

Saw chuckles wryly. “That’s normal. Get a bucket and keep it by your bunk tonight, then.” He squeezes her shoulder comfortingly, though his hand is so heavy and cold. “It _will_ get easier, my child. In time.”

For the first time (too long, too long, she should have been curious about it long ago, but there’s been so much to take in), Jyn wonders why Saw calls her ‘my child.’ But she can’t find the words with which to ask. Even opening her mouth is too much of a chore, her jaw replaced with lead. Every scrap of energy she has, she devotes to getting to her wobbling feet, and following Saw inside where it’s dry.

When she sleeps, she dreams she’s playing with dolls, flimsy little dolls, and slowly snapping the heads and limbs off every one. She imagines they squirm a little—she can feel them writhing in her palms—but they’re only dolls, so they don’t bleed, they don’t scream. They’re only dolls, so they don’t die when she twists their heads off their bodies. They only cease being dolls, and are broken dolls instead, useless because they can no longer carry out the function they were made for.

When someone comes up behind her, and starts to pull her arms and her legs off, one by one by one by one, she doesn’t bleed, doesn’t scream. There’s fluff pouring out of the stumps, and a smile painted on her face. When giant fingers grasp at her neck and begin to pinch, to squeeze, to _pull_ , she doesn’t scream. Everything in her mind tells her that the pain should be beyond endurance, but there is no pain, and there’s a smile painted on her face, so why should there be any pain? When her head comes off, Jyn is left there in so many pieces in the mud, the rain falling on her unblinking eyes, until finally the rain washes all the paint away, and she’s blind.

-0-0-0-

Saw was right. It does get easier. For some reason, Jyn feels as though it shouldn’t, but it does. This doesn’t feel much like avenging her mother ought to, for none of her dead are the man who killed her, but the numb cold crawling up her spine doesn’t care for her opinions on the matter.

-0-0-0-

Months are spent in preparation for Jyn’s first trip into Iziz. She’s a little older now, Saw says, and she’s proven her mettle (even if she isn’t big enough to start learning how to ride the beasts yet), so she can take part in operations within the city. But first, there are more things she must learn.

The rebels cannot take firearms in and out of Iziz; the Empire scans all vehicles going in and out of the city, and even a hunter’s rifles will be confiscated until such time as the hunter goes back out into the wilderness. Likewise, knives are prohibited, and explosives are right out. That means the rebels are left to improvise.

Jyn’s size makes hand-to-hand combat outside the range of things she wants to rely on in a fight, though her instructors still teach her basic self-defense. “It’d be suicide for you _not_ to know this stuff, kid,” one of them, a Kiffar named Dax, tells her. He leans down and ruffles her hair affectionately. “Always good to know how to throw a straight punch, too.”

That’s what she’s taught—straight punches, and where to kick or punch to cause the most pain quickly. Those sensitive areas tend to vary wildly from species to species, but there is some overlap, and most of what Jyn is taught applies to human or near-human species. Essana advises Jyn to yank on a Twi’lek’s lekku if she wants quick incapacitation. “Though you should _never_ do it to a friend, and you should really only do it if you have no other choice; lekku are…” Essana breaks off, blushing, but Jyn gets the idea.

Batons made of wood or bone aren’t flagged as weapons by Imperial scans. Neither are canes (provided their tips aren’t made of metal) or shovels. Jyn had never thought of shovels as having too many possibilities as weapons, but by the time she’s been training with one for about a week, she’s singing a different tune.

“We’ve got blasters inside Iziz, you know,” Essana points out, watching in amusement as Jyn whacks away at a straw dummy with her shovel. “Saw smuggled them in years ago, back when the restrictions weren’t so comprehensive. They’re mostly low-yield, and you can’t carry them out in the open, but you’re not going to have to rely on a shovel all the time. You’re better with a baton, anyways.”

Jyn shrugs, and keeps whacking away at the straw dummy until she feels her shovel impact not against straw, but the wire frame beneath it. Essana’s right, but there’s something about using the shovel that’s a lot more satisfying than anything else. When she hits the dummy’s face with the flat of the shovel, it’s almost like…

It’s probably not healthy to imagine that she’s hitting anyone in particular, but Jyn has found she doesn’t care much for that particular interpretation of “healthy.” Imagining she’s hitting someone in particular has been doing wonders for her concentration. She forgets the ache in her arm from overexertion, forgets the constant growling in her stomach, even forgets the way her boots have started to pinch her feet these last few months. Sometimes she forgets her name, too, for just a moment, but in that moment, she is gloriously _free_.

“So, what are we going to be doing in Iziz?” Jyn asks, when she realizes, to her chagrin, that she’s hit the dummy’s face so many times that there’s no more straw left around the frame. She sits down by Essana, away from the unforgiving sun, and fiddles with the cord of her necklace. “No one’s told me anything yet.”

“Gathering intel, mostly.” Essana unfurls her long legs, rolling her shoulders as she stretches. “We do some, heh, ‘liberating,’ while we’re there, but mostly, the weapons are just for self-defense. Saw’s got plenty of contacts in the city—he’s been trying to get more details on the Imperial bases out in the bush for years so we can try to launch another strike—and you pick up some interesting news in the spaceport, sometimes. If our ‘friends’ off-world have anything for us—news, supplies, assignments—we hear about it in Iziz. And…” Essana smiles, though her lekku stiffen in what Jyn has learned to recognize as self-consciousness. “…There’s why I come along.”

Jyn frowns slightly, eyeing how, in addition to Essana’s lekku stiffening, her back has grown very stiff. She considers touching her friend’s shoulder, but thinks better of it; Essana doesn’t always respond too well to touch. “Why is that?” She has been curious. Most non-humans stand out too much in Imperial spaces to be worth the risk of sending there; none of the other non-humans at the base are coming into Iziz with them.

Essana laughs ruefully. “It’s nothing too bad, I suppose. There’s a brothel in Iziz—“ Jyn has only an imperfect knowledge of what a brothel is, but lets her go on “—where all the workers are Twi’leks. Mostly women, but there are some men there, too. They’ll talk, but they’d rather deal with another Twi’lek, and a lot of them only speak Ryl, anyways, so I’m the best choice.” She clenches her jaw, runs her fingers spasmodically over her wrist. “My cousin had to go work there after her parents died—they died in debt, you see. I… I like to go see her, when I’m there,” Essana says woodenly, ducking her head so that Jyn can’t see her face.

To that, Jyn says nothing.

A week later, they set off from the base, Jyn, Saw, Essana, and five others, with an old transport piled high with the preserved pelts and carcasses of beasts trapped so they can be sold in the markets—and give the group a legitimate reason to be heading into Iziz in the first place. The trip will last two days, and the plan, Jyn learns, is an old one. Hit the gates at the time of day when traffic’s at its heaviest, and the guards will hurry them through just to get to the next vehicle in line.

The only thing that mars the trip is the oppressive heat and the reek of the animal carcasses they’re hauling—even preserved in such a way as to prevent decomposition, the odor they give off still makes Jyn’s stomach turn. Onderon is beautiful in summer, and Jyn is seeing more of it now under the sun than she has in all her time here, nearly three years though it’s been. The hills are lush and green, carpeted with verdant forests that spare the travelers, even those following the wide roads, the worst of the sun. A thousand different types of birds squawk and cry in the trees overhead, dropping vivid red and gold and purple feathers as they fly away. Large insects with iridescent blue carapaces buzz around the transport, and Jyn watches them hover all around, fascinated with the way the light catches on their gossamer wings.

But her first sight of Iziz tops all that.

Jyn remembers Essana’s stories about Iziz. She’s told so many that it would be impossible not to remember at least some of them. Essana was good at putting vivid images in Jyn’s mind for her to feast on, but those secondhand images are nothing to seeing it for herself.

Maybe it’s just because the last time Jyn lived in a city, or anywhere near a city, she was still living on Coruscant, and she can only vaguely grasp at memories of Coruscant now. But to her, Iziz _sprawls_ —a vast collection of sapient life enclosed behind a massive wall. She can pick out hints, here and there, of the old walls Essana told her about, in the way buildings will suddenly form very straight, even lines in their borders without there being a wide road to account for it. Large, empty spaces situated throughout the city mark the marketplaces, Jyn can only suppose. And looming over it all, in the very center, is the Palace, walls and pinnacles of gleaming gray and black stone surrounding lush gardens and fountains, encasing marble and gold and silk. The gold bands across the stone glitter in the sunlight. _I bet there’s enough money in that place to buy food for all of Onderon for a year._

_I wish my parents could see this…_

There’s something else, though Jyn does not catch it at first, as the transport begins the long descent into the valley where Iziz lies nestled. The very stones seem to _speak_. They groan under the weight of history, and not all of it is untroubled—or distant. Iziz has suffered occupation before. Now, it plays the unwilling host again.

-0-0-0-

There are blasters to clean. _Of course_ there are blasters to clean.

For the first few days, Jyn is so overwhelmed by her surroundings that she can barely remember to meet with contacts like Saw told her to—Essana has to bodily drag her to keep her from just standing still in the middle of the street and gawking at something else she hasn’t seen before. If the mere sight of Iziz from afar was astonishing to her, actually being in Iziz reminds Jyn, keenly, of just how long it’s been since she last lived in a city.

Iziz is not the equal of Coruscant in that. Coruscant is a planet wholly given over to its city, and for equals, you would look for Nar Shaddaa or Taris. But the other side of that is that Jyn very rarely went outside, _really_ outside, when she lived on Coruscant, and she can’t remember the places where she went being too crowded. They didn’t live in one of the lower levels, after all.

All of Iziz is as the lower levels of Coruscant—loud and crowded and lively. Buildings are packed in on each other so tight that you have to edge through the alleys turned sideways, and even then, it’s a tight fit. Merchants advertise their wares from stalls or storefronts, shouting cheerfully over one another. Neon signs flicker, dimmed by noonday sun and clouds of dust. Children playing or running errands for their parents dart in between transports and wagons to get from one side of the street to the other, miraculously avoiding being crushed and laughing all the while. A mouthwatering aroma of bread or stew or whatever is being cooked at the time wafts from the eateries. Small crowds gather by the fountains to toss trinkets into the water for luck or just to cool their dusty faces.

Before long, Jyn finds her head spinning from trying to process it all. She manages to adjust, eventually. She adjusted to living alone with her parents back home, hadn’t she?

(There’s one thing Jyn has no trouble processing, even in the beginning when she can barely sort out sight from smell from sound: the squadrons of stormtroopers, their armor powdered with dust, that go periodically marching up and down all the major roads, and the tanks that accompany them.)

The days are given over to carrying messages back and forth between Saw and his contacts. Eventually, Jyn’s told, it will be her and Essana’s job to loiter in the spaceports, listening for anything that might be useful—as it stands, they’re both young enough that they’d stand out too much if they tried going into a cantina. Once curfew’s fallen and they can’t move around outside anymore, they plot out what they’ll do tomorrow, and if the next day’s itinerary involves moving to a different hideout, then the night’s activities involve a lot more packing than they do sleeping.

And, of course, there is the routine maintenance of blasters that Saw is so insistent on. There’s always that. _Always_.

Somewhere along the line, it must have been decided that Jyn is simply the best at cleaning blasters, because once again this oh-so-necessary, oh-so-boring task has fallen to her. While Essana roams the streets of Iziz’s southeast quarter, Jyn is stuck inside, sitting on a threadbare rug in a shadowy room, taking blasters apart, cleaning them, and putting them back together again. Lucky her.

Mercifully, there comes a distraction in the form of a commotion at the back door. Jyn drops her current blaster to the ground, grabs her baton, and pokes her head out into the dark, narrow hall curiously.

“Well, is Saw here or isn’t he?” a man Jyn has never seen before is demanding of the one who let him in. He doesn’t look like someone who’s been living out in the wilderness; his fair skin is smooth and clean, his dark hair neat and his clothes well-cared for. He has a noticeable upper-class Core accent, almost identical to Jyn’s own. No amount of time away from the Core could get rid of it, and Jyn wonders briefly if he ever lived on Coruscant, like her. “He told me to meet him here.”

“I’m here, Bonteri,” Saw calls from one of the other rooms. The newcomer— _Bonteri_ —relaxes noticeably. “Come in here; I’m ready to talk.”

Bonteri leaves the door to Saw’s room slightly ajar, letting a thin strip of grayish light seep out into the hall. Even if she was doing something more interesting than cleaning blasters, Jyn would still feel her blood burning with curiosity. She creeps across the hall, wincing at the muffled sounds of her footsteps on the old, braided rug, and takes a position by the crack in the door, peering intently inside.

“Saw, our colleagues are… concerned about your recent activities.” Bonteri has his hands pressed flat on the small rectangular table in Saw’s room, while that room’s owner paces to and fro.

“I’ve done what they asked of me,” Saw mutters, the scar on his face twisting a little as he scowls. “What’s the problem?”

Bonteri’s smooth brow creases as he replies, “Yes, you did as they asked. You’ve also done several things which they did _not_ ask of you. You’ve been attacking too many patrols and transports, drawing too much attention to yourself. Senators Mothma and Organa, and the others, they are concerned that your activities here are going to trigger another crackdown, not just on Onderon, but on other Inner Rim worlds where our people are operating.”

At that, Saw stops pacing and instead stares disbelievingly at the other man. “What am I supposed to do, then, just sit on my hands while the Empire rips Onderon apart?! If I don’t do something now, we’ll _never_ get rid of them!”

“I appreciate that, Saw!” Bonteri retorts, his voice going high and uneven while his face flushes with angry color. “I could hardly stomach the Republic; do you think it gives me any pleasure to have to play nice with its successor?” His brown eyes flash with something very close to panic. “But this won’t be like last time. We lost half our number the last time the Empire came out in force here, and you’ve never been able to rebuild your forces back to what they were before. You don’t have the money to hire mercenaries, and we can’t count on Mandalore to fall apart again and draw their fire; they’ve been keeping a much closer eye on Mandalore and other hot beds these past few years. Another crackdown would be a disaster, Saw, and you know it!”

Silence falls like a ray shield between them, palpable and crackling, and Jyn holds her breath. She knew a little about what Bonteri just said—that some time before she came to Onderon, there was some kind of large-scale clash between Saw’s rebels and the Empire. She had gotten the impression that it must have gone badly, since no one ever likes to talk about it, and Saw won’t bring the subject up at all. But this… This sounds worse than anything Jyn had imagined.

 _I’ve never seen… anything like that_.

Bonteri closes the gap between them, his hand lighting on Saw’s forearm. “You look terrible,” he murmurs, a tremulous smile flitting on his lips. “If you need more food, I could try to arrange something. There isn’t much to go around, but they could probably spare _something_.”

“We make plenty of money for food selling game here, Lux,” Saw says dismissively, though he doesn’t wave Bonteri’s hand off of his arm. Personally, Jyn would like to argue that point, but she’s more interested in hearing the rest of the conversation. “We don’t need that kind of charity.” When Bonteri fails to look reassured, he grins toothily and adds, “But if you know about any heavy ordnance our friends can spare, that’s the kind of charity we’re fine with.”

“I suppose there isn’t _too_ much wrong with you, then.” Bonteri rolls his eyes and adds fondly, “Even if you do look like you’ve been sleeping in a drainage ditch again.”

Saw laughs. “Not all of us have to show up to our battlefield looking like we just stepped off the runway.” He gestures to Bonteri’s cloak, constructed as it is of noticeably richer material than anything anyone else in the building happens to be wearing.

They smile at one another, and Jyn gets the feeling that she’s watching something very private, but, never having cared very much about that, she keeps watching.

“Do you have any news for me?” Saw asks after a long moment of too-comfortable silence. “About what I asked you to look into?”

Bonteri takes a step back and sighs, the smile fading from his face. “Not much, Saw. Whoever this friend of yours is, he’s not an easy man to find.”

Jyn perks up, her eyes brightening. This is new; she hasn’t heard anything about Saw trying to track someone down. _Who is he?_ she wonders. _A defector, or a captured rebel?_

That does not seem to be what Saw wanted to hear, because he sits down at the table, puts his head in his hands and groans. “Come on, Lux; you’ve been at this for a year!”

“I am watched, Saw,” Bonteri explains, in the too-patient tone of someone who’s had to explain this more than once before. “There’s only so deep I can dig before I flag some sort of security monitor, and I get an investigator turning up at my door. You might get better results if you passed the search off to someone without any ties to the Separatists.”

“Don’t you have _anything_ new?”

A shadow passes over Bonteri’s face. “Yes,” he says quietly, “I do.” When Saw’s head snaps up, he goes on hastily, “Not enough to figure out where he is, so don’t ask about that. The Empire doesn’t seem to want anyone finding your friend. But I have gleaned some information in my search. It’s…” He pauses. “…It’s worrisome. Truth be told, it doesn’t make much _sense_ , but it is worrisome.”

“Tell me.”

“It’s—“

But before Bonteri can say any more, Saw waves him off into silence. Because, Jyn realizes too late, he’s staring directly at the crack between the door and the doorframe.

Before Jyn can scramble away, Saw is out of his chair, and both men have crossed the room to stand at the doorway. When Saw unceremoniously thrusts the door open, all Jyn can do is stare up at them and pretend that she wasn’t standing there the whole time.

“Who’s this?” Bonteri asks, meeting Jyn’s gaze bemusedly.

“Someone who needs to finish cleaning those blasters like I told her to,” Saw tells him flatly, though there is no real anger in his voice.

That’s as clear a dismissal as Jyn has ever needed. She turns on her heel and heads back down the hall. As she starts into the room where her pile of uncleaned blasters lays waiting, she hears Saw mutter “Maybe remember to shut the door the whole way next time, huh, Lux?”

“I didn’t know she was there!” Bonteri protests.

“With this kind of caution, I’m surprised you haven’t been arrested already,” and Saw pulls the door firmly shut and locks it before Jyn can hear any kind of response from Bonteri.

From the doorway of her room, Jyn stares at that locked door for a long moment, biting her lip. What are they talking about in there? Who is it that Saw wants found, and his contact Bonteri has been trying to dig up information about? But she doesn’t think she could get away with listening by the door again, and she’s unlikely to hear much through a shut door _. I guess it’s back to cleaning blasters._

-0-0-0-

Time stretches on. The seasons turn, the rains come and go, and taking part in raids becomes so commonplace for Jyn that her heart no longer begins to pound painfully when she heads out in the night with the others. It’s just… something she does, like cleaning blasters and looking after the beasts of burden Saw says she’s _still_ too young to learn how to ride. Hunger doesn’t register to her quite as much as it used to; with each passing month, she notices it a little less than she did before. They’ve finally found a larger pair of boots for her, so Jyn doesn’t feel her shoes pinching at her feet every time she takes a step. They bury friends, and Jyn buries pain so deep inside that it only comes out as a tired, distant cry.

She doesn’t dream as much as she used to, but honestly, Jyn doesn’t find that too distressing. Her dreams have brought her little joy, these past several years. They bring her nothing but fear and confusion. She’s better off without them. Better off when she doesn’t give her head over to dreams.

Then, one day, change is set into motion once again.

“Saw?” Ijana asks, blinking her dark eyes incredulously. “Is that a _tank_?”

Saw has assembled Jyn’s base, along with a couple of the other bases, in a deep valley some miles away from Jyn’s home base. Everyone but the number typically standing watch has been taken out here; Jyn can’t remember the last time he called out so many of them at once. Though he gives no explanation when he’s rousing them all from bed, the reason for this excursion is soon staring them in the face.

It’s a tank, alright, and one of Imperial make, too, if its resemblance to the tanks Jyn’s seen in Iziz and the white cog painted on the side are any indications. Jyn eyes it warily, unwilling to get too close, even if the tank has obviously taken damage—the main gun is half-destroyed, and there’s a massive rip in the hull on the right side. So, they have a tank. What exactly are they going to be doing with it?

Others are muttering the same question, and Saw silences them with a raised hand. He smiles, more brightly and brilliantly than Jyn has ever seen from him. “Yes, Ijana,” he says firstly, “this is a tank. The last time the Empire thought to drive us off of Onderon, they didn’t do nearly as good a job of cleaning up after themselves as they ought to have. Their loss is our gain.”

“Saw, we can’t use that tank,” Ijana points out. “It’s too badly damaged.”

“I’m getting to that, Ijana. My friends!” Saw calls out to the crowd. “The time has come for us to be more than simply a thorn in the Empire’s side! I have obtained information concerning the locations of their bases across Onderon, their strength and defenses. We can destroy those bases, and then free Iziz itself!” A ragged cheer goes up from the crowd; besides Jyn, Essana is clapping and shouting agreement. “But before we can attack, we must prepare.

“As you have no doubt gathered, this is an Imperial tank. It is of the same make as the tanks that the Empire uses to defend its bases here on Onderon, and when attacking from the ground, they will be the greatest threat to our success.

“But what if we made them our greatest asset, instead?”

Ijana nods briefly. “That could work,” she allows, quietly enough that she clearly doesn’t mean for anyone much further than Saw to hear her. “ _If_ we somehow managed to get close enough without being shot to toss something inside that would incapacitate the troopers without damaging the tank.” She grimaces. “Seeing as we’re dirt poor, though, I don’t know where you plan on getting something like that.”

Far from looking discouraged, Saw flashes a grin at her. “And is this something like what you’re thinking of?” He motions for a couple of men to wheel in several large durasteel crates. When the top of the first crate is popped off, he pulls something small and round out of it, and holds it up for the crowd to see. “A stun grenade should do the job.”

Ijana’s narrow features split in a wide smile. “Who’d you have to kill to get your hands on those?”

“Some stormtroopers south of Iziz. No one worth anything’s going to miss them. Now—“ he turns his attention back to the crowd “—I have called you all here because, before preparations for the strikes can begin, there is a technique I wish to teach as many of you as can learn. I will be making a circuit around Onderon, visiting the other bases; it is important that as many of us as possible learn how to do this.” He goes to stand by the tank, pressing the palm of his hand against its hull. “During the Clone Wars, the Jedi came to Onderon, and taught us how to deal with tanks. Today, I’m going to teach you all the same thing.”

Saw gives the demonstration himself, climbing up the side of the tank with greater speed and agility than Jyn would have ever guessed he possessed, and popping the hatch open with practiced ease before miming tossing the grenade inside. It’s plain to Jyn that whoever goes for a tank in actual combat will need someone to watch their backs for incoming fire, but that looks… That looks like something she could do, easily.

That sentiment is not a universal one. Many of the other rebels stare dubiously when it comes to be their turn to try, and of those who try, many can’t get to the hatch in a timely manner, or at all. They’re not climbers.

But when Jyn’s turn comes, she doesn’t hesitate. She leaps up the smooth slopes of the tank, fast enough to keep from losing momentum, and without giving any thought to falling. If she thinks of falling, surely that will be enough to make her fall. When she gets to the hatch, she pauses for a moment, and turns back, squinting against the sun, to face the other rebels. There are a few smiles, a few looks of disbelief. Patience is nodding, Essana pressing her hands over her mouth.

Over Saw’s face there is a shadow, some memory eating at his jaw. But when he meets her gaze he smiles approvingly, and Jyn beams back, her heart in her throat.

-0-0-0-

The first strike takes place three months later, after the plans have been drawn up—troop deployments, timing, and the like. Jyn is part of the team that hits a base far to the northwest of Iziz, where hopefully an attack won’t be automatically seen as a reason to implement a crackdown. It wouldn’t do for the plan to be quashed before it could even be carried out, would it?

The base falls in less than an hour, within minutes of Jyn getting control of the only tank present. Logically, this isn’t any sort of great victory. The base was small, undermanned and poorly-equipped. Those closer to Iziz will be much tougher nuts to crack.

But when the others cheer, Jyn finds herself cheering with them. She remembers why she’s on Onderon in the first place, after all.

-0-0-0-

For a time, everything continues to go as it ought to. The rebels continue to pick off the smaller bases, one by one by one, before moving on to larger targets. They pick up valuable intelligence in the base computers, and more food and munitions than they’ve had at once in years. Jyn eats well on a consistent basis for the first time since coming to Onderon. Even if the food is mostly freeze-dried MREs and dinners positively soaked in preservatives, just the fact that there’s as much of it as she could want, that she can eat until her stomach no longer growls, makes its taste richer and sweeter than anything she can ever remember eating.

And to go along with that, Saw and the other rebels seem happier than Jyn has ever seen them. Before, all of them, Jyn included, snatched joy in shadowed places with furtive glances and greedy hearts. Joy turned to ashes soon enough, so why not enjoy it while you could? Now, now they find themselves glutted with joy, as every operation ends in victory, and casualties stay at an almost unbelievable low.

Joy starts to die, little by little, as they hit bigger targets, more well-equipped bases, and victory becomes more difficult to come by. There is smoke in Jyn’s nose, shell blasts in her ears, and the painful thrumming of explosions in her bones, making her teeth rattle and stars burst behind her eyes. They’re clawing and scrabbling for every inch of ground, still winning some, and losing others. Rebel patrols are going missing in the woods. There’s blood on her hands and she’s gritting her teeth, but she’s not ready to give up just yet.

Joy starts to die more swiftly soon afterwards.

Somehow, the Empire knows when they’re coming, and where they’re coming from. Their rupings are shot down out of the sky miles away from any base, tee-musses are rounded up and slaughtered for their meat, and the tanks aren’t brought out anymore so that the rebels can’t co-opt them, or their hatches are sealed shut in such a way as can’t be forced open. There are more troopers at the bases than there are supposed to be, and their arms more powerful than they ought.

“Saw,” Jyn can hear Ijana pleading at night, “we can’t take much more of this. We’ve got to scale this back.”

“Saw,” comes the message from Lux Bonteri in Iziz, when he can finally get a message through, “you have to stand down. I’ve received word that the Empire is planning on sending more troops in if those already present on Onderon aren’t able to contain your forces by the end of the month. _Please_ , you have to stand down.”

But Jyn knows he won’t. She’s seen the look in his bright eyes, and she knows he won’t. There’s too much riding on this; it would be as ripping his heart out of his chest to quit now. But all the same there’s a hard, taut quality to his face as the days wear on, as defeat’s bitter taste clogs in their mouths more and more. And Saw’s never been one for giving up in the first place.

Then, the Empire _finds them_ , and there is no choice _._

Jyn is running to the ships, the ones that haven’t been shot down. There’s a stream of people in front of her, and Saw standing by the hatch, waving them on. He looks past at what’s behind and snarls, bitter tears shining unshed in his eyes. Jyn can hear screaming behind, smell smoke and feel the ground shaking, but she doesn’t dare look back. If she looks back, she won’t be able to keep running. She’ll just stand rooted to the ground, and when the ground breaks beneath her, she’ll fall, down, down, down into nothing.

It isn’t until she’s on the ship that she feels the hot tears running down her face, realizes that neither Patience nor Essana are there with her, and finally hears the howls tearing from her throat. She doesn’t even know why, either. Onderon wasn’t home. Nowhere has been since she last had her parents with her. But she is huddled on the floor of the ship howling while it takes off and the crew desperately tries to evade Imperial fire, and her fingers rake the cold bulkhead, and she feels defeat settle in her stomach like a stone.

-0-0-0-

“Saw?” Jyn leans across the table and presses her hand to his shoulder. He looks up, after what feels like an eternity. The look in his eyes… Jyn has to turn away, but cannot keep from going on, “Saw, some of the people from the other bases made it out. They’ve made contact with us; they want to know the plan going forward.”

“Sit down.”

“Saw…”

“Sit down, Jyn,” Saw says, and his voice is so soft and so _old_ that if she did not know better, Jyn would swear that he has aged to an old man in less than a day. He runs a weary hand over his scalp, still crusted with dry blood and bristling with days-old growth of hair.

Slowly, her wide eyes fixed on his face, Jyn sits down across from him.

Saw takes a datapad from the table and holds it up in the air before slapping it back down on the table. His mouth twists in an expression part grimace, part bitter smile. “I’ve gotten some information from our friends in Iziz. …I suppose you’ve been wondering how the Empire knew where our base was?”

Jyn doesn’t answer. She fiddles with the cord of her necklace, running her fingernail nervously over the cord.

Even with no reply, Saw goes on, “Three of our scouts who went missing told them where to find us.” He sounds positively sick. “I’ve been told the Empire has been advertising this extensively in Iziz.”

“They were tortured,” Jyn says immediately.

“Or they were bribed,” Saw replies, too-gently, swallowing hard, “or they were spies of the Empire all along, and only pretended to be loyal to the cause. You cannot know for sure.” He scrubs at his face, old blood from a broken fingernail glinting under the flickering light overhead. “You can never know for sure, it seems.”

 _Can this have shaken him so much?_ Jyn fidgets in her chair, her hand now vice-tight around the cord of her necklace. _Doesn’t he see they must have been tortured? None of them would have betrayed him willingly. They wouldn’t._ “Saw…”

“How old are you now, Jyn?” Saw asks abruptly.

“I’m… thirteen,” Jyn tells him uncertainly. Now, she fidgets with her sleeve cuff instead of the cord of her necklace.

Saw sighs. “So young, still,” he murmurs, his voice nearly inaudible. “When I was thirteen, the Clone Wars had not yet broken out, wouldn’t break out for several years more. Onderon knew only peace, and we knew nothing of war. My sister—“ His voice breaks, and he is silent.

“Your sister…” Within the confines of her ribs, Jyn’s heart slows, blood pumping only sluggishly through her arteries. The air is stale, and cold. “The woman on the holoprojector.”

She was eavesdropping, she knows, and he ought to be angry. If it was so private as all that, he ought to be angry. But what flickers over Saw’s face instead looks almost like relief, and Jyn doesn’t fidget, she _squirms_. “My sister, Steela. I never told you about her, did I, Jyn?”

Before she can stop herself, Jyn shakes her head.

“Steela was…” Saw pauses, licks his lips. Far from seeming an old man, now he seems all too young, as if he has become a boy scarcely older than Jyn herself. A boy who lost his sister, long ago. “Our parents were killed when the Separatists first came to Onderon. Steela led the resistance against them. She was braver than anyone I have ever known, and she was kind as well. Steela was…”

 _Steela was someone you left engraved on the stone, imprinted on the sky, tattooed on your bones._ Cold crystal presses against Jyn’s chest, and she can taste bile rising in her throat. She forces it back down, but still, the voice in her mind says _‘Everything I do, I do for you.’_ She cannot keep from hearing, however she might wish to deafen herself.

“You remind me of her.”

That wasn’t… That isn’t… Though she feels as though she’s being absurd, Jyn shrinks back a little. “You think I’m like your sister?”

“No.” Saw smiles sadly. “But I think you _could_ be like her. That, Jyn, is very different from being like someone in the here and now.”

It would help if he would tell her more about what Steela was like. Curiosity gnaws at her mind, but Jyn cannot quite bring herself to ask. There’s another reason she came here, the first reason she came here. “Saw, the other groups… They _are_ waiting for some word from you.”

“And you’re right; I do need to speak with them.” With one last sigh, Saw gets up from the table and starts for the door. He pauses, and turns back to lock eyes with her. “Listen, Jyn.” There’s that awful, aching tiredness in his voice again. “When you lead others, you should always be open with them. Don’t keep them waiting; don’t make them hang on your every word.”

Jyn cannot imagine herself leading others. She is thirteen, and has lost two homes and a third place that she never called home, but still howled over when she lost it. She is thirteen, and watched friends die, was powerless to do anything at all but _watch_. She is thirteen, and wishes she could pull the ground over her head and wish this all away. There’s nothing about that that can be forged into a leader, surely. But she nods anyways. “I understand, Saw.”

He smiles, and for a moment his sadness seems to melt away. “Yes. I think you do.”

-0-0-0-

Onderon is lost to its rebel children. This is the truth that goes denied for weeks, but is ultimately acknowledged, bitterly. Onderon is lost, and its rebel children need a new base of operations. They can’t keep on like they are now, flitting from spaceport to spaceport, straining for news, straining for credits to pay for food and fuel. They can’t keep on like this, ducking stormtroopers and Star Destroyers, fleeing system after system while their numbers dwindle even further.

But where are they supposed to go? The Empire’s hand stretches far over the galaxy. There are few worlds outside the most remote Outer Rim Territories that they don’t control in some capacity; they’ve even been making small inroads into Hutt Space. Unless they leave known space behind altogether, their only options are to flee to backwater planets poor in resources, where they can only hide and not strike back, or to keep on leading this fugitive life, until they’re finally shot down out of the sky.

Sometimes, Jyn wonders what the use is. Usually, she wonders after another ship’s been shot down, after more of their people have been killed. The Empire has more men, more ships, more weapons than every rebel cell in the galaxy put together. They never stop coming, they never fall short. How do you fight something like that? How _can_ you fight something like that?

But if the alternative is dying, if her only alternative is to float insensate in the cold vacuum of space, never to be returned to the embrace of the earth, Jyn will fight. It doesn’t seem that she has much choice.

In space, sheltered behind airlocks and bulkheads, Jyn begins to dream again.

She is crawling on all fours through the dense forests of Onderon. Sweat dribbles down her face, clings to the back of her shirt like the stickers she picks up from scrabbling under bushes. When she looks up, the sky is burning, so she does not dare look up again. Behind her there is screaming, and smoke, and the shattering of the earth, and she dares not look back. There is someone crawling beside her, but she cannot see their face.

Suddenly, her father is calling for her, but it’s as though his voice has been put through a signal scrambler, for Jyn cannot make out a single word. She hears only garbled noise, but it’s his voice, she’d know that voice anywhere, and his voice aches with the burden of galaxies, the weight of millennia.

Jyn tries to rise, tries to stand to find him, but the thorny bushes have sprouted hands that drag her back down. She twists and turns, she struggles and screams, but her fingers are digging furrows in the dirt, there is earth in her mouth and muddy tears on her face. _‘The open sky is lost to you,’_ a voice whispers to her. _‘If you would deny it, you cannot be a part of it. It was the earth’s embrace you wished for, was it not?’_

There is a hot, piercing pain in her back, and Jyn wakes to her thin cot in her small ship in the cold of space. Still, it takes a moment for Jyn to remember that there is no one in this room but her.

-0-0-0-

Jyn Erso is sixteen, and has been without a home for half her life. She has learned not to be particular about where she rests her head, and she has learned to live with the strange sense of weightlessness that comes from never calling a hearth your own, never having anywhere to point to and say “That’s home.” It’s like learning to live with hunger—day by day, month by month, you forget what it was like to be full.

“Jyn, my child,” Saw says to her one day, clapping her shoulder, “you and I are going to take the shuttle out in an hour. There’s an inhabited moon I want to scout out; I think it might have potential as a base.”

There is no reluctance in her reply. Jyn welcomes any chance to feel earth under her feet again, and secretly, there is some part of her that’s flattered by the notion that Saw wants just her along. She shouldn’t be too flattered by it, she knows; taking a small party in to scout out a location is only sensible. But there’s no telling her heart something her head already knows, if her heart decides it doesn’t want to know, too.

They land out in a great, grassy plain. The air is cool and dry. A weak sun shines in the pale sky, and the wind sighs through the long grass. Off a few miles to the east, there is a high ridge of rosy stone, dotted with a few scraggly trees. All is quiet, and Jyn drinks the clean air as though it’s the last she’ll ever have. _I can’t remember the last time I was on such a quiet world. It’s…_ She has to fight back a smile.

“We didn’t pick up any sign of Imperial installments on the long-range scanner,” she points out to Saw. “And we didn’t pick up any Star Destroyers or light cruisers when we entered the system.”

“There isn’t much here that the Empire would want.” When Saw catches Jyn’s questioning look, he goes on, “I’ve been here before. This moon is relatively poor. The inhabitants are mostly subsistence farmers. Come, there’s a small town just past that ridge. We can make contact with the locals, and see if the Empire has been here recently.”

They make slow progress towards the ridge. In contrast to his usual brisk pace, Saw seems to be in no hurry to reach their destination. Silence falls between them, as thick as the heavy blankets back on board their ship. It doesn’t matter much to Jyn, that silence. She hasn’t felt talkative since the last time she had Essana with her.

When they get to the ridge, instead of climbing over the rock, Saw leads Jyn to a small cave half-hidden by spiny bushes. “Jyn.” He’s searching among the rocks, his back turned to her. “I’ve changed my mind. I want you to wait here for me. Aha,” he mutters, and Jyn watches as he opens a hatch, wincing when the rusty hinges screech in protest.

Jyn folds her arms across her chest, staring dubiously down into the small bunker Saw has unearthed at the back of the cave. “Are you sure?” she asks uncertainly. “If you think there might be trouble, wouldn’t it be better to have me there to back you up?”

“Yes, Jyn. If there _is_ trouble, I’ll need you to return so that you can warn the others.”

He’s firm, and Jyn can see that there will be no persuading him otherwise. Heaving a sigh, she climbs down the ladder, into the bunker, coughing at the sharp tang of metal, the thick layer of dust. _How long has it been since anyone last used this?_ she wonders critically.

“Now, Jyn?” Saw asks her. “You have your knife?”

“Yes.”

And your blaster?”

“Of course I have my blaster, Saw. I know better than to leave it behind.”

Saw nods shortly. “I just wanted to be sure.” He stares at her strangely, his brow knit, his eyes over-bright. “Wait for me,” he says stiffly. “I will return.”

The latch is shut, and Jyn is left alone with the dust.

But he doesn’t return. She waits and waits, but he never does come back. It takes Jyn a day and a half to open the hatch again. It takes longer than that for her to realize that this tale has ended the same way it began.


End file.
